My Experience With Sunset Lagoon
Back in January of 2008 my Wife and I used some of our RCI points to go on a (Much Needed) romantic getaway. We stayed at the Sunset Lagoon; which was decent. We decided to sit in on one of their 60 minute sales presentations (because they were throwing in some good freebies).
Three hours into our 60 minute sales pitch we were no longer at the Sunset Lagoon, but now at the Royal Sunset. The sales office was an open bar, guys filling your glass with whatever you wanted. We were at the table with our salesperson Victor Big, and the sales manager Jonathan Stoker. Being that my Wife and I were already pretty familiar with how timeshares work, and how to make them work financially their usual sales techniques were not working on us.
Finally the salesperson said "look, we have one unit that is a foreclosure. The owner could not pay the fees, so we cancelled his contract. We can sell you this unit for 1/3 the cost"
We were running the numbers and it still was not making financial sense. We said no. Then he stepped it up another notch. The sales manager said:
"The government has been coming down on us lately, they are saying that our kiosks at the airports and in popular locations are annoying the tourists. They are making us close all kiosks in six months. The government is also changing the rules as to how we can give away free vacations at our resorts. The way that we found around this is to purchase back weeks from our owners. We then give THOSE weeks to perspective buyers. We are calling these "Marketing Weeks". Two of your weeks will qualify as marketing weeks each year. We will purchase each of these weeks for $1500 each. If you decide to sell both, that amounts to $3000 a year."
Obviously the wife and I thought that sounded great. We were told that since we were already in 2008, we would have to wait for 2009 to sell our first weeks. Months later in December we contacted the resort to get the ball rolling on selling our two weeks in 2009 as Marketing Weeks. The resort responds stating:
"Good afternoon.. I hope that you are having an excellent day. Regarding your concerns, allow me to inform you that Sunset Group does not rent units or weeks form our customers. You can promote them by yourself between family and friends, you just have to inform our Reservations Department that someone else is going to be using your unit. "
Being extremely frustrated, we steamed for a while before I contacted them again. I thought there may be a language barrier. I thought that if I didn't say "sell back" but instead used their terminology "Marketing Weeks" it might be more clear. The resort responded again:
"Good afternoon. I hope that you are having an excellent day. Regarding your concerns, allow me to inform you as back in December, that Sunset Group does not rent units or weeks form our members, you can promote this weeks by yourself between family and friends, you just have to inform our Reservations Department that someone else is going to be using your unit. If you need further information, please don´t hesitate to contact me."
If they have a form letter for it, they must get the question all the time. Now what? They were smart in making us wait for months before knowing that we were scammed. We definitely did not come to this realization during the cooling off period, even though they had us sign a form rescinding our right to a cooling off period.
These people are such crooks. It is really so sad. When you are at each resort you see so many happy people on honeymoons and family vacations. It makes me sick to think of all of those nice people being scammed by these thugs. Can't anything be done?
To anyone who is reading this who may still be in there rescission period, pull the trigger on getting your money back ASAP.
